Episode 23: Dog Training with Lara Joseph

Episode originally aired on Pure Dog Talk. Show link can be found below.

About Lara Joseph: Lara Joseph is the owner of The Animal Behavior Center, an international, educational center focusing on teaching people how to work with animals using positive reinforcement and approaches in Applied Behavior Analysis. She is a professional animal behavior consultant and trainer.

Lara explains how positive reinforcement training works – and why it’s so effective! She uses it extensively with zoo animals and exotics, as well as with companion dogs.

She also explains how to shape behaviors, such as crate training, digging, and jumping up. Redirecting the dog’s behavior requires correctly identifying the “reinforcer” – in other words what the dog wants – and then providing that reinforcer for an acceptable behavior.

Laura and Lara discuss how to listen to your dog, and how to approach the topic of aggression in canines.

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Transcription

Laura Reeves [0:41] Welcome, everyone! I am Laura Reeves, host of the Good Dog Pod! And I have a very special guest for us today. Lara Joseph is the owner of the Animal Behavior Center. And you’re in Ohio, right, Lara?

Lara Joseph [0:54] Yes, just outside of Toledo.

Laura Reeves [0:55] Excellent. And she is going to talk to us about a topic that a lot of us want more information about, right? And that is understanding our dogs’ behavior and how you can really see those signals that the dog is giving you and use applied behavior analysis and get some great results, right?

Lara Joseph [1:15] Sure! Yeah! Great! I’m always excited to talk about this. 

Laura Reeves [1:23] You’ll find that if you listen to any of my podcasts, they’re mostly geek-out sessions because I find it so exciting and so interesting and so it turns into a really fun conversation. So thank you for joining us, Lara. I appreciate it tremendously. Give us a little on how you started with this and some of the work you’re doing. You talk about working with exotics and the application of that to dogs. I just think that’s so fascinating. 

Lara Joseph [1:50] Thanks. Yeah, so do I. Laura, I wish I got into it sooner than I did. Unfortunately, it happened when it did about 15 years ago when I first acquired a certain species of animal I had no history of working with. I didn’t know anything about them. That was a parrot. So I was working with an undomesticated animal that, at that time, there was not a lot of science-based information out there about working with them and their behavior in training. So that was my segue into working with animals using applied behavior analysis and now here I am 15 years later at a 10,000-square-foot facility in which I focus on teaching people how to understand the use of applied behavior analysis with all species of animals—but with a focus on exotics. (Exotics meaning zoo and any type of undomesticated animal. But not limited to! We work with dogs here as well.) The reason I focus on exotics is because your dogs are domesticated and a lot of them can be really resilient to the use of force, subversive coercion, punishers. But you try that with a parrot—I work with a lot of zoo animals, too. You try this with a giraffe, an alligator (all of which I train), a turkey vulture—and they are not going to be very resilient. I like to focus on exotic because you use force or subversives with them, and your life is in danger. That’s the importance of understanding the laws of behavior. A lot of times in applied behavior analysis, I call it the science of common sense—because you’re probably already using it anyway. You may not understand the side effects of what you’re doing. 

Laura Reeves [3:47] I love what you said. You can probably push your dog’s butt down and make it sit, but try that with a giraffe! That seems… 

Lara Joseph [3:57] Yeah, try that with a giraffe. You push them, they can kick you. They can hurt you with their head. I mean, the message is there. The power of the laws of behavior and using reinforcing—it’s there.

Laura Reeves [4:12] So let’s take that and apply that. You wouldn’t do this to a giraffe, don’t do it to your dog. Let’s take that and talk about some very specific behaviors that you could see and how a listener would use applied behavior to shape a different behavior.

Lara Joseph [4:29] First off, when I’m working with any animal (especially one that I’m not very familiar with or I’m not familiar with that individual animal), I need to really understand behavior. I need to understand what that animal is trying to tell me or tell me what to do or what not to do. That’s like with working with the dogs, you pay attention to the growl. You pay attention to the lip-licking, the body language of the animal. So some of the things that I will start doing are basic target training: teaching the animal to touch a particular body part to an object. And then at the same time, if I have to shake that (many times I do), I’ll shake that but I’m sitting there trying to understand and accurately read that animal’s body language and understand what it looks like when they’re pushed too far, when they’re not comfortable, when they are comfortable. And I do that a lot of times, Laura, just starting with a target. Put your nose in my hand. Touch your nose to a stick. That way, I can correlate what that body language looks like all the while giving them space and all the choice—that they want to stay with me or walk away from me. If they walk away from me, then I’m understanding okay, either I’m not using a high enough reinforcer or the animal isn’t comfortable with what I’m asking. 

Laura Reeves [5:52] Right. And so let’s take that and apply it to a very specific case. I have an 80-pound, 6-month old Mastiff that thinks flinging himself up on my 90-year-old grandmother is a fun thing to do. Trust me: I’ve seen all of this. What is it that we’re going to observe is the behavior and, if you will, the cure? 

Lara Joseph [6:17] Obviously that’s a behavior we don’t want, so the first thing I’m going to do, Laura, is understand what is reinforcing the behavior. What’s causing that behavior to maintain and increase? And once I identify that reinforcer, I will withhold that reinforcer for the undesired behavior while delivering it for another behavior—an alternate behavior, one that’s desired by us, such as (in that instance) it would probably be stationing. Go to an area and stay there until I ask you to do otherwise. Obviously stationing is only going to happen for a small period of time. The one thing I wouldn’t do is just withhold the reinforcer for the undesired behavior. Because then you’re going to get a very frustrated animal that’s probably going to go into extinction burst, meaning showing extreme high rates of the undesired behavior because the animal has a history of that working and getting a desired consequence and now, all of a sudden, it’s not. So you can get into high anxiety frustration burst, which could lead to other undesired behaviors, such as behaviors labeled as aggression. 

Laura Reeves [7:25] What you are describing there—I think we could segue that into an absolutely fabulous discussion on crate training, because you see that so often when we’re crate training puppies, right? And the dog barks, and you let him out. And the dog barks, and you let him out. And the next time, you don’t let him out so he barks and barks and barks and barks and barks and barks and barks. I think that’s a perfect explanation for why the dog is doing that behavior. 

Lara Joseph [7:49] Yeah, and we (as caretakers, trainers) may think the dog needs to understand, but when you have an extinction burst, the dog doesn’t understand. It’s not understanding the contingency. So that’s when we need to go back and say: before the dog jumped on your 90-year-old grandmother, before your 90-year-old grandmother even comes into the room, teach the dog a station. Before shutting in its crate for several hours at a time, we need to shape that calm, relaxed behavior in the crate before we shut the door for a long period of time. So the dog understands the contingencies. 

Laura Reeves [8:35] Absolutely. And I think it’s important, too, for the owner or trainer (or what have you) to understand that dogs don’t come out of the box trained. You know, you get on all these social media groups and everybody’s like, “Why is my puppy doing blah?” And I’m thinking because the puppy has you beautifully trained, honey! 

Lara Joseph [8:56] Exactly! And with that being said, Laura, one of the labels that, when I hear it, I’m just like ooh, you are missing such an opportunity to train this animal is the label “the terrible twos.” Those are the years where the animal is learning and understanding and manipulating its environment to get consequences that it desires. I hear a lot of people say, “Oh, it’s just the terrible twos. Just wait it out.” Whoa. What’s happening is the animal is learning contingencies and consequences in its environment, and if that animal can see, hear, smell, or feel you, you are training it whether you realize it or not. The key question is: what are you training it to do?

Laura Reeves [9:37] That. That what you said just there is so important to understand. Every interaction that we have with our dogs—every single one—whether we think it is or not, we’re training them or they’re training us. 

Lara Joseph [9:50] Yeah, and I’m okay being trained. I’m okay with the animal training me as long as I’m training you because training is learning, learning is communication, and I want to be a part of that team with that dog or that animal. It just needs to produce consequences that the dog’s not going to lose its home and that I can be happy in the home as well; we can be happy together. 

Laura Reeves [10:13] Absolutely. So give us another example of a good behavior that we can identify specifically what the dog is looking for, its reward, and offer it a different reward to get a better result. 

Lara Joseph [10:30] Sure. One that comes to me off the top of my head is digging. We have a blind and deaf Border Collie here that’ll be two years old next week. Boy, is she giving me a run for my money! Not only just a Border Collie but then I have one that’s also deaf and blind. She can’t see. She can’t hear. She is constantly seeking information and learning from her environment. We have a leak in our center deck. The majority of our center is all grass. It’s an enclosed building with grass inside. When it rains, one of the gutters leaks right in the center of the building, creating a small mud puddle. What I was seeing was her coming back into one of the training rooms covered in mud, and I would go out into the center, and I would find this hole. I’m like I need to redirect this immediately. You know what I mean? I have a Border Collie that’s finding her own enrichment! So I tried to identify what is the reinforcer behind the digging, and she was only digging in this one spot. So I went out and I paid attention. Because she’s deaf and blind, when that water would drip on the back of her head, it caused (I saw) a curiosity. And it would target her to that area. She would feel the water on the dirt, which is now turning into mud. So the water, the texture of the mud (which reinforced the digging). I had this happen probably four or five times. And then I’m like we’ve got to redirect this immediately because she’s already learning! This is bringing a desired consequence. So I took the reinforcer (one of them), which was the water, and I introduced her to the hose. And I introduced her to a kiddie pool. And I had to shape the behavior of her jumping into a kiddie pool full of water, and then she would dig. We put all kinds of two-inch plastic balls in there, and she liked feeling them moving around on top of the water. It redirected her attention to the pool and away from the mud puddle. We have not had a problem with digging since, because I nipped it in the bud immediately and redirected the behavior.

Laura Reeves [12:50] Right, and so her reinforcer for her was the fun, if you will, right? The digging activity itself was reinforcing itself. 

Lara Joseph [12:58] Yeah, I think the digging activity and the mud, the water, the mixture, the splash. And probably, Laura, because she’s deaf and blind, it was probably the temperature difference of the water on her skin and the mud on her skin. So I provided that to her in the pool. 

Laura Reeves [13:16] Wow, that is wild. The challenge of a deaf and blind dog—I mean, you can get one or the other and you can deal with it, but both—that is a heck of a challenge. 

Lara Joseph [13:25] You know, something I also say, Laura, because we’re getting ready to bring in on Tuesday next week, a fully-flighted blind parrot. I always say, “We don’t learn from easy.” These are my challenges. These are the animals that I’m like okay, how can we do this together? 

Laura Reeves [13:44] Amazing. I hear this one a lot, and I know this one is frequently a cause of problems for people: back to that crate training situation and talking about shaping a calm behavior in the dog crate. I’m hoping we can lay this out in such a way… Most of my listeners are pretty experienced dog people, but this is something I’d like to be able to share with people who are newer to the concept, so that this is something that anybody can do. I think that’s so important for people to understand. They hear us talking. They’re like mumbo jumbo, I can’t. I want to make sure that people understand this is something all of us can do.

Lara Joseph [14:20] It’s all about shaping. Reinforcing small approximations towards the desired behavior. We were just talking about this in the discussion this morning: differential reinforcement. That’s the lingo-mumbo-jumbo. It is shaping. You take too big of steps in your shaping plan, you obviously can turn what you’re trying to train into an aversive (something that the animal doesn’t like). You stick the dog in the crate for two hours and that can be way too big of a step in the shaping plan. What I do is when I’m crate training, I crate train when I don’t have to leave. I’ll put the crate where it’s convenient and easy for me to see, and you can target the dog to go into the crate. And then the rates of reinforcement, really high. Behaviors being reinforced in high amounts while it’s in the crate, door is always open. Dog chooses to come out, reinforcement stops. The dog is likely to turn around and go back in. As soon as it goes back in, BOOM. Reinforcement in high amounts. If you don’t push the dog too fast, you can see this happen, depending on the history of the dog, unless we’re working with a puppy. You can see this happen pretty quickly. This dog is starting to learn contingencies. If I do this, then this happens. Dog steps out of the crate: If I do this, then this doesn’t happen. So the dog is going to move back towards the thing that brings the desired consequence. What I do is you’ll see the dog go into the crate, sit, and wait for reinforcers to be delivered. Then I start with shutting the door. I shut the door to the crate maybe an inch. Tell it, “Good.” Mark that behavior. Open the door back up, deliver reinforcer. And then if the dog stands up, door opens. You want to go out? Fine, go ahead and go out. Reinforcement stops. That’s just incorporating choice. I don’t want the dog to feel trapped and like your choices are now boom, gone. Then I shape the behavior of the dog being in the crate, the door being shut for 15 seconds, 30 seconds, a minute, 3 minutes, 4 minutes. Those are my training sessions throughout the day when I’m not leaving. And then some people choose to feed their dogs in the crate. I never did, because I didn’t have to. But what I would do is for longer periods of time, that’s when the dog would get a specific treat (a highly valued treat) that it got at no other time. That would be like a stuffed Kong. So what you’re doing is creating conditioned reinforcers. Every time I go in the crate, the dog gets this specific food reinforcer that it gets at no other time. That way, if the dog is getting it at no other time, pairing it with going in the crate, there’s your conditioned reinforcer. Boom! You’ll start to see the dog, as you approach the crate, the dog is approaching the crate with you, wagging its tail, waiting to go in because it knows the consequence, which is very desirable. 

Laura Reeves [17:37] I love that, because over the course of time, with certain dogs, I have used in the show ring a special toy that only comes out when it’s in the show ring, for a dog that maybe wasn’t as motivated to show but loved this particular toy. Do you see that as something that you could speak to, about conditioning a response of excitement in a specific situation? 

Lara Joseph [18:02] Sure. When that animal is getting that toy or that food reinforcer or whatever (the animal is always the one that decides the reinforcer)—when the dog is getting that highly-valued reinforcer at no other time, one of the things in the lists that I go through (the four main factor of reinforcer effectiveness) is deprivation, and that’s exactly what you and I are working with. It does not mean to deprive the animal of food. What it means is the longer that highly-valued reinforcer is withheld, the higher value it becomes. When it’s paired with, as you said, the show ring or going into the crate, they’re more eager to interact. There’s the conditioned reinforcer. It’s paired with. It’s associated with. I see a lot of dogs very excited once they get in there.

Laura Reeves [18:56] Right. Okay, very, very cool. Last topic I wanted to touch on—

Lara Joseph [19:01] We could sit here and talk about this for months. 

Laura Reeves [19:04] Hours and months and days! Absolutely. Like I said, when we started, this could be a complete geek-out session, so my apologies. I got a little distracted!

Lara Joseph [19:12] Hey, I’m all about geeking out on behavior. That’s what I do.

Laura Reeves [19:18] Okay, so working on aggression issues ( if you have a dog with aggression issues). We see this come up again and again and again and again in people’s commentaries in various places: aggression is a problem that people run into. I would love it if we could talk a little bit about—as we’re understanding behaviors—some of those body languages that we might miss, even those of us that are relatively experienced with dogs, that we might miss. The early signs, early warning signs, way before you get to the growl. Talk about some of those body languages that the dogs will give us.

Lara Joseph [19:56] Sure. I’m thinking a wide variety of animals, too, but one thing that I think is pretty consistent across species is the freezing, where the animal just freezes. If I see an animal freeze, you bet I’m going to stop whatever I’m doing, whether that animal is looking at me or looking at something in the environment, I am going to stop whatever I’m doing and I’m going to look at what that dog or what that animal is looking at to identify the reinforcer behind the freeze. Because then those can now become cues to me: Did these work? By work, I don’t mean—people pair the word work with averses. But it’s not. This needs attention. This needs focus. I need to focus on this right now before this escalates to—I don’t know what’s going to come next. I don’t want to find out what comes next. There’s one that I look for. Freezing. Even if the dog’s tail goes stiff, drops, whatever—those are things I’ll watch for and take a look at what’s in the environment, what’s causing that. If it’s me, I definitely don’t want that to happen. Then I’ll identify why it’s happening. That’s what’s so great about using targets, especially a target stick, with several of the animals I work with. Every dog is its own individual. Their behaviors are going to be different from the next one. If I’m target training and if I’m target training with a potential case of aggression, the first thing I’m going to pull out is a target stick. That’s because if I misidentify and I push that animal past its comfort level and it aggresses on the stick, at least it wasn’t my hand. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay. You don’t want to see that happen again. Now you’re reinforcing the aggression. That’s what I do with a lot of different zoo animals. I’m like whoa, what does this mean? So I’ll start with a target stick. And then I’m pairing those behaviors with positive reinforcers. I don’t move to the next step until I clearly understand and that dog clearly understands what I’m doing, because pushing that dog too far could reinforce aggression.

Laura Reeves [22:23] Right. You could also maybe touch on that just a little bit. I don’t think necessarily it’s well understood, that aggression almost becomes self-rewarding. I don’t know if that’s technically accurate. 

Lara Joseph [22:39] Meaning the aggression serves a purpose?

Laura Reeves [22:41] Yes, and it gets them what they want. Yes. 

Lara Joseph [22:44] Yeah! I could go forever on this one. Because that is so common in the exotic world. You ask the animal to do something, like I’m thinking exotics in my head. I’ll put dog back in my head. The growl didn’t work so now the dog starts to lunge. If you pull your hand back, which I highly suggest you do, and the dog wanted you to retreat, you just retreated. Now the dog knows that’s what worked. The growl didn’t do it. It’s the lunge. If you keep pushing, then it reinforces the dog should do something else. Okay, the growl didn’t work, the lunge didn’t work, now let’s try the bite. I get bit by a dog, yeah, I am retreating. Now you’ve taught the dog that’s what works. That just happened. 

Laura Reeves [23:38] I think about it, honestly, in terms of things like grooming. Doing toenails. So the brand-new owner has the brand-new dog. The owner’s already a little nervous about trimming nails because they don’t want to make the dog bleed and they don’t want to hurt the dog, and that’s great. So the dog has picked up the owner’s nervousness. The dog growls when the owner goes to do the toenails. The owner doesn’t do the toenails. They run away. And everything is happy. The dog said, “Hey, look! That worked!” 

Lara Joseph [24:05] Look what works! Exactly. I had a dog here a while ago, and it was one that would lunge and bite. This was an individual case. Where I started with this dog was distance from me. I would toss treats. Not behind it! Because I did not want it turning its back on me, because then I’m likely reinforcing exactly what I’m trying to change. If the dog was not comfortable taking its eyes off of me, I didn’t want it to take its eyes off of me. I will always—if I’m working with an aggressive case with a history of reinforcement (meaning that aggression has been there for a longer period of time)—I will always work off contact, protective contact. There will always be something between me and the animal, in case I made the wrong move. I don’t want to make that wrong move twice because now the behavior is being reinforced. What I would do is toss treats to the side so the dog could still keep its eye on me, and then I would just retreat. So my reinforcer is the food. Another reinforcer was increasing distance. 

Laura Reeves [25:16] Wow. So in the home setting, and you have a new dog or you have a situation and you see the freeze or you see the—pick another behavior.

Lara Joseph [25:30] Hear the growl. 

Laura Reeves [25:31] Hear the growl. I know I will see dogs sometimes that are indicating to me, from my understanding of behavior, that they are uncomfortable before they get to the growl: things like staring or—not even hackles up, but ears pinned, that sort of look—all of those sorts of things. 

Lara Joseph [25:51] What was the question?

Laura Reeves [25:53] The question then becomes identifying some of those for the listeners, to other things that they can look for between the freeze and the growl that would indicate to them that they need to focus on, as you said, whatever it is that’s causing the problem. 

Lara Joseph [26:07] Some that I look for here is the furrowed brow, that look of concern. It may not be aggression yet, but those can be antecedents to something turning into aggression. The tone of the bark: Is the bark different? I know with my dogs—I know the sound of the play bark or the warning bark or the bark that’s hey, there’s something wrong here. So, the tone of the bark, the furrowed brow, the intensity behind the run, the pace of the run—I’m trying to think of something towards the door. You know what I mean? That run, that stance, that gallop is different when I come home versus a stranger’s at the door. So, just in the intensity of how they’re moving. 

Laura Reeves [27:02] Just their whole body carriage. Are they loose and playful or are they stiff-legged and weary? 

Lara Joseph [27:08] Yes. In addition to the ones that we’ve already talked about, those are a couple more I’m paying attention to. Can I get the dog’s attention back? Those are things I’m looking for. 

Laura Reeves [27:20] That’s a good one. 

Lara Joseph [27:23] The intensity of the stare—in conjunction with several other behaviors that we already listed, if I cannot get that eye contact back, we’ve got something to work on or we may have a problem. So those are all antecedents. Those are things I’m looking for. Those are cues—that body language, that communication—that I’m looking for where I’m thinking what is this? What exactly is going on? Because it’s not normally what I see during play and relaxation. That’s how I identify it. 

Laura Reeves [28:00] Absolutely. I just want to make sure that we’re giving people tools, right? That’s my goal here, all the time. Here’s a tool for this. Identification of some of those communications—it makes me sad sometimes because I think there are so many people who don’t hear what their dogs are trying to tell them. 

Lara Joseph [28:20] Oh, sure, Laura. They don’t hear what their dog is trying to tell them or they don’t see or they don’t understand. 

Laura Reeves [28:30] I use the word “hear” like the dog is trying to communicate with you, and you are not getting it. 

Lara Joseph [28:38] That was just like we had a dog in here recently where it was here for jumping. So we picked the replacement behavior. I always tell people in order to change an undesired behavior, you have to replace it with another one. So, we identified the reinforcer, which was attention for jumping. We trained; the replacement behavior was sit. So the dog was trained to sit with the contingency of when you sit, then you get the attention. When you jump, nothing happens. We were sitting there talking, and the dog was walking around the room. The dog sat, and I’m looking at the dog like, “Reinforce it! Reinforce it! Reinforce that behavior!” You know what I mean? They’re all looking at me like, “What?” I’m like, “The dog is sitting!” She goes, “Oh, I know, but I was just focusing on our conversation.” That’s exactly it! If you do not reinforce that sit, and that dog has a history of jumping, it’s going to regress back to what once worked, which is going to be the jump. Because the dog is sitting there, giving you the behavior and you’re not paying attention. My reinforcer is not being delivered, so I’m going to go off the behaviors where it is delivered. 

Laura Reeves [29:48] Now that right there I think is such a huge piece of this, because people will listen and they’ll do the thing and then they’ll forget. What I talk to people about is consistency. We talk about it when it comes to training for the show ring, but it’s the same concept. It has to be the same all the time. If you want it to do this, you can’t say, “Oh, it’s okay to jump on me when I come home from work and you’re happy to see me, but bad-bad-dog-beat-you-with-a-stick when you jump on me and I’m in my nice clothes before I leave for work.” 

Lara Joseph [30:20] Exactly. The dog doesn’t understand those contingencies. 

Laura Reeves [30:22] That just makes my head spin off! 

Lara Joseph [30:28] That’s what’s called an intermittent schedule reinforcement, when the reinforcer is delivered once in a while. That will keep desired and undesired behaviors very strong. Something else, Laura, that I was going to say (you and I were talking about this) is a lot of people say, “Yeah, but I can’t be walking around with treats on me all the time.” Well, reinforcers are so much more than food. We only use food as reinforcers here probably 45% of the time. A lot of the reinforcer is attention, play, interaction, tone of voice, toys, whatever. 

Laura Reeves [31:02] I think attention is so sadly underlooked, because 90% of the time, all the dogs really want is our attention. 

Lara Joseph [31:09] Exactly. So a lot of times, people will be like, “Well, I can’t be paying attention to every time my dog sits, to go over and deliver a reinforcer.” In the beginning, be consistent. Once the dog understands, then you create duration. You create periods of time, so you don’t have to be sitting there delivering the reinforcer every single time. 

Laura Reeves [31:30] Right. Excellent. Alright, well, Laura, I swear we could sit here (as you said) and talk about this for months, but I think my listeners have probably finished their treadmill now. 

Lara Joseph [31:43] Exercise longer! 

Laura Reeves [31:45] It’s good for you, people! Good cardiovascular! Alright, well, thank you so very much. I really appreciate your time and you sitting down to talk with me.

Lara Joseph [31:53] Thanks so much for having me on! It was great. It was a good time.